


Morning in the Burned House

by diasterisms



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), General Leia "didn't deserve this" Organa, implied Gray Jedi!Rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 17:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5975062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diasterisms/pseuds/diasterisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leia's not really surprised at all, to be honest, but, for the sake of his pride, she should probably pretend to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morning in the Burned House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [englishable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishable/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Утро в сгоревшем доме](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10425705) by [Astronautka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astronautka/pseuds/Astronautka)



> I feel like I should apologize for this? It's rambly and non-linear and more introspective than shippy and there's way too much Expanded Universe stuff sprinkled in (I CAN'T LET GO) and there's even an _Elder Scrolls_ reference in there somewhere, and, all in all, this is probably not what my recipient had in mind when they gave that cute prompt as stated in the summary. I'M SORRY, ENGLISHABLE! HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY :(

i.

 

This is the story, as best as Leia can piece together from witnesses:

 

When they find him at the end of the war, he is unmasked and standing guard in front of his master's throne, red lightsaber already ablaze and waiting for Rey to fly right at its jagged edge— which she does the moment the stone doors of the great chamber crack in half before the wave of her hand.

 

Finn and his troops make to follow her inside, but she halts them in their tracks. Screams, "No! _Mine!"_

 

She charges with teeth bared. It is a duel for the ages, or so they say, crimson crossguard shrieking against sapphire saberstaff, a burst of lunges and parries too fast for the untrained eye to track, the pillars of Snoke's fortress trembling as the Force lashes out from both sides, shattering the windows, gouging deep into the walls. Rey and Kylo Ren are at their best, their most desperate, slicing and spinning, bodies slamming into each other, deflecting each other's telekinetic pulls, feet waltzing in rhythm and counter-rhythm as ground is lost and regained and lost again all across the length of the room.

 

Finally, he staggers, his extinguished lightsaber sliding to the floor in a sharp clang of metal. Her blade hums a hair's breadth away from his neck and he sinks to his knees, a slow and awful fall.

 

They stare at each other, chests heaving. The bond that they so reluctantly share shivers with unspoken words. There are tears in both their eyes.

 

*

 

This is the story, as Rey herself tells Leia in debriefing:

 

Snoke is a crumpled heap of skeletal limbs and black robes on a marble throne. Strange that entire worlds have been destroyed by something so human-sized. There is an angry scorchmark running diagonal across his chest. He was already dead when Rey tore down the doors.

 

*

 

It takes a lifetime's worth of experience with hardball negotiations and subtle diplomatic maneuvering. It takes every last bit of clout the Organa name still possesses. It takes old favors being called in and promises that may as well have been written in blood.

 

In the end, the combined might of the Galactic Senate, the Resistance Council, and the War Crimes Tribunal are no match for Leia at her best, her most desperate. They look the other way when the _Millennium Falcon_ flies Kylo Ren to the Unknown Regions, beyond the Outer Rim, beyond Wild Space, beyond hyperlanes— beyond the reach of both mercy and judgement.

 

*

 

The Sith have a primal rule. A pattern. The apprentice slays the master and takes up the mantle of Lord. Perhaps it was no call to Light that guided his hand. They can't be sure, because he isn't talking.

 

He needs a minder. Someone to join him in exile, strong enough to keep at bay whatever Snoke's death has awoken.

 

Luke volunteers.

 

"I guess I can clear my busy schedule," he says, with a trace of his old, wry humor.

 

Leia looks away. She, of all people, knows what plans he'd had, what great hope had burgeoned in him after the Empire fell. Caraya's soul, that had been decades ago, they had been so _young—_

 

Luke adds another crease to his weathered brow. "Bad joke?"

 

"Yes," says Leia.

 

*

 

When she sees her son again, it is through the one-way glass of a detention cell on a Resistance starship orbiting Coruscant.

 

She stops at the sight of him hunkered down in a chair, staring at the floor. His sallow features, his unruly black hair, his broad shoulders. How can this be her Ben, grown so tall, so lean? He looks like a stranger, and that is what flares anger through her veins, prompting gritted teeth, clenched fists.

 

_You killed my husband,_ is all she can think at first, before realizing that she can replace those last two words with "your father" and the sentence will still mean the same thing.

 

She stiffens with shame and guilt. Tells Rey softly, "I can't go in there. Not yet. I might do something I'll regret."

 

The girl looks confused. She's never had a family, she can't understand that it's possible to love someone and not _like_ them at the same time. But she nods, anyway, and enters the cell alone.

 

Safely hidden from view by the one-way glass, Leia watches Ben lower his head further at Rey's approach.

 

*

 

"He takes his mask off and then a servant walks into the room without knocking. He flinches," Rey whispers, out of the blue, while they pore over diagrams of battle formations in the base on D'Qar. She looks like like she's in some sort of trance. "He hates it when people see his bare face. His first instinct is always to turn away."

 

Leia grips her by the shoulders. "You can see him? Can talk to him?"

 

"I..." Rey shakes her head, the distant expression vanishing, replaced by something tighter and more furious. "Master Luke warned me this might happen."

 

Yes, a most reluctant bond, deepening as the war runs its course.

 

*

 

"The planet is called Morning," Rey is explaining to Ben now, the tension in her voice palpable even through the audio feed. "It was a hotspot for the Old Republic's political exiles. There's a house there and everything, although I suppose you and Master Luke will have to fix the place up a bit. I'll be doing supply runs on the regular— but, of course, you'll have to learn how to sustain yourselves."

 

"Morning," Ben echoes. The way he says it makes it sound like something else.

 

Rey's not looking directly at his face. It occurs to Leia that this is not so much to put him at ease as it is to make him more amenable to the terms of his banishment. "You will be provided a couple of speeders for getting around, but no spacecraft. You may not set foot within the Rim ever again. You may set up a comm link only with the _Falcon_ and with— with General Organa."

 

For a moment, he looks absolutely _horrified_ at the prospect of talking to his mother. It's the same expression Han used to wear whenever he had to come clean about some misadventure. Leia almost, very nearly, laughs.

 

"What about you?" Ben asks Rey. "What will you do now?"

 

She lifts her chin. "You have no right to ask me that."

 

He looks at the floor so hard that it seems like he's tearing through the hull of the ship, watching stars glimmer and planets revolve beneath his feet. "I'll know, anyway." And he taps the side of his head.

 

"And I'll know whatever _you're_ up to," she hisses. "If you harm Master Luke, I'll—"

 

"Kill me?" he interrupts. "You should have, long before this. Perhaps you do not want to feel how someone dies."

 

"Or perhaps," she retorts, "I'm just not like you."

 

The bond grows _heavy._ Leia can feel the nervous energies sparking off the two young people, even through layers of steel and glass. There is a silent conversation going on inside that room, a war's worth of bitterness.

 

And— something else. Something secret. Something trying to stay as small and as buried as possible.

 

Leia extends her own Force sensitivity, intrigued by what she might possibly find. But no sooner has she grasped the edges of the sensation when it's as if she collides into a door that slams shut out of nowhere.

 

Ben suddenly looks up. Looks right at her.

 

_The face of my son._

 

She shrinks out of reach. Beyond mercy, beyond judgement.

 

ii.

 

It's late into the night cycle where Leia is. Luke's hologram fizzes and shivers, at times dissolving into blue static. He is so _far away._

 

"We made planetfall safely," he reports. "Rey's on her way back to the Core."

 

"Is..." She swallows. "Are you finding the house all right?"

 

"Leia." His tone is gentle. "It's okay to ask how your son is doing."

 

She fixes him with a blank, bleary stare. She can't. She's already pulled too many strings for someone she's not even sure deserves it.

 

Luke sighs. "He's sleeping now. The voyage must have tired him. He and Rey were arguing the whole time."

 

"Over what?"

 

"I don't know." He offers an apologetic smile. "Most of it was in their heads. I didn't want to pry."

 

Leia has seen for herself how taxing the bond can be. Rey would stumble into morning meetings with dark circles under her eyes. Would come undone during battle-droid sparring sessions, limbs jerking back too soon or too late, strikes in completely the wrong direction, as if she were fighting an opponent other than the one in front of her.

 

"She woke into her powers the wrong way," Luke continues. "Too much— and too late. She was nineteen, had lived her whole life without exposure to other Force-sensitives. It was like a dam finally breaking. He pushed her and she pushed back, without the proper shields."

 

"Do you remember when he— when Ben came into his powers?" Leia's voice is small in the late of night, small only for the brother who has _earned_ the right to see this side of her.

 

"Yes," Luke says, gently.

 

*

 

News of Ben Organa-Solo's birth sends the HoloNet into overdrive. Why should it not? He is the child of war heroes, nephew to none other than Luke Skywalker himself. Even the Alderaanian diaspora sends gifts and envoys to herald their lost prince.

 

Han and Leia are a bit overwhelmed. They had known, in an abstract sort of way while she was pregnant, that their son would draw the attention of an entire galaxy. But the _reality_ of it— the unblinking _magnitude—_ is staggering. What sort of life could there be for a child whose fame preceded his first breath? What would it mean for him, to shoulder the weight of history from the moment he emerged into the light of day?

 

_What will you become?_ Leia quietly asks her newborn as he gazes at her from his crib with wide, solemn eyes.

 

There are others, too, who wait in the shadows, clinging to a former, darker glory. Others for whom this boy is the grandson of Lord Vader.

 

*

 

When Ben is five years old, he is abducted during a state visit to Munto Codru, by a faction of the Imperial Remnant styling themselves the Empire Reborn. The mission to rescue him takes on the tone of crusade, several of the New Republic's largest and most powerful destroyers zeroing in on the kidnappers' worldcraft. Han, Luke, and Leia lead the charge into the inner sanctum, and, when they find Ben—

 

He is cowering on the floor, hands clutched at his head, screaming fit to burst. Everything in the room that isn't nailed down is floating in the air. There are two dead bodies sprawled at his feet, with the lolled tongues and bulged eyeballs of those who have been strangled to death.

 

Han rushes to his son, but one of the blasters in slow orbit around Ben immediately swivels in his direction, shooting an energy bolt that he has to dodge.

 

"Ben." Luke's voice resonates throughout the chamber, calm but sharp as a whip-crack in the silence. "Ben, it's us. Your mother, your father, your uncle. The people who love you."

 

In the brief moment before Ben recognizes them and all the objects clatter to the floor, Leia swears that she sees something wild and unrecognizable and _ancient_ in his eyes.

 

They take him home. His nightmares begin not long after that.

 

*

 

Among spacers there is a sort of mysticism attached to the names of starships. They believe that whatever you call a ship would ultimately shape its destiny. Hence the _Falcon,_ digging its talons into the Maw as it made the Kessel run.

 

Leia is no spacer, but she'd named her star yacht the _Alderaan,_ anyway. She's unsure if it's a tribute to her homeworld, or a reminder that she cannot let go.

 

The first time Rey comes onboard, when she accompanies Leia to a back-channel negotiation with the Chiss Ascendancy some time after Han's death, pain flashes across her features. "I've been here before."

 

Leia has been expecting something like this, ever since the bond started manifesting itself, and so she keeps her voice steady against the wild lurch of her heart. "No, Rey, you haven't."

 

The girl looks around the ship, as if starved for the sight of it. For the sight of corridors that a little dark-haired boy had once walked so long ago. _Where are you,_ Leia wants to shout, _are you gazing out through her eyes, tell me where you are and I will come get you, of course I will, nothing could keep me from it._

 

But previous experience has taught her that acknowledging Ben's— _presence,_ for lack of a better word— will only cause him to panic, giving Rey a splitting headache that can last hours. So, instead, she waits as Rey struggles for control, gasping and ragged, running a trembling hand over the walls as if relearning the feel of them.

 

_We ask so much of you, young one,_ Leia thinks, and perhaps she means that for Ben as well. Hadn't somebody said something to that effect once— yes—

 

*

 

Lando Calrissian shakes his head as he looks out the windows of a tower in Hosnian Prime, having raced to Leia's side after the destruction of the Jedi academy.

 

"Son of Han Solo and Leia Organa," he muses. "Nephew of Luke Skywalker. Grandson of Padme Amidala, and of Darth Vader." He laughs, sardonic and harsh. "Poor kid. He never stood a chance."

 

iii.

 

"General— Ma'am—"

 

It is not unusual to Leia, people stumbling over her titles. She has had to reinvent herself so many times. There are those who still call her princess— not so many now, with the old ones dying and taking their memories of Alderaan with them. Mon Mothma herself had slipped, in her final days, stroking a wrinkled hand over Leia's braids and speaking fondly of grass paintings and spiced wine.

 

_Princess. Chief of State. General._ And now what? The Resistance has been disbanded, and the Senate is waiting for her next move— some with trepidation, especially those who led the campaign to shuffle her to the side for being paranoid about the First Order.

 

_Maybe I should just retire,_ she quips to herself.

 

"Hello, Rey." Leia smiles at the girl standing in the doorway to her private office. "How was your trip?"

 

The smile is not returned. Rey is always grumpy and exhausted after each supply run to Morning. Today, she doesn't even waste a breath on pleasantries. "I have a message from Master Luke. He says to tell you that it's time."

 

"Time?" Oh, how very politican of her. Always stalling, always waiting for the opponent to lay down their cards first.

 

But _this_ opponent grew up in the desert, and then in battle. Doesn't play parlor games, wouldn't even know how to begin. "Yes— Ma'am." A decisive nod.

 

Leia can't put it off any longer. She's run out of excuses. She hasn't spoken to her son since war's end.

 

Actually, the last thing she had ever said to him was: _May the Force be with you._ His hologram had been fifeen years old, sullen and painfully thin in Jedi robes. He'd cut the comm link before she even finished her sentence. He had betrayed Luke not long after.

 

_Mother_ used to be one of her titles, too.

 

"Does he want to see me?" The question escapes before she can clamp it between teeth and tongue.

 

The expression that slams over Rey's face makes Leia feel as if she's just committed a grave breach of etiquette. It's odd. Yes, a Force-bond is a private, sacred thing between the two people that share it, but _this_ one? The girl's gone practically stiff with a strange protectiveness, almost fierce.

 

It lasts only for a moment, though, the muscles of that beautiful, freckled face hastily rearranging themselves into something more neutral, as if they realize that they've given too much away. "He doesn't think you will. See him, I mean."

 

Leia stares, not understanding.

 

"You didn't the last time," Rey explains, awkward and apologetic at being on one end of a conversation that she shouldn't have any right to. "The last time you sent him away, you never came to see him at all."

 

*

 

The soil of Morning is as white as the snows of Hoth— whiter, even, in the glare of a sun that never sets. Because there is no moon, the tides are gentle, entire oceans of dark water almost as still as mirrors. Leia disembarks from the _Millennium Falcon,_ looks out at the array of jagged bone-colored mountains stretched around her, and thinks that this is the perfect place for men who have been unmade.

 

The house is perched on top of a small hill, in a valley strewn with sparse patches of spiky grass and the occasional silver-green tree. It is a fine old building of clean and graceful lines, if somewhat fallen into disrepair, the pourstone facade chipped in certain areas.

 

Luke greets Leia and Rey at the entrance, looking right at home. "Chewie didn't come?"

 

"We dropped him off at Kashyyyk." Rey bows to her master. "He is... not ready."

 

_Neither am I,_ Leia thinks.

 

Her son is in the backyard, elbow-deep in the innards of a T-16 skyhopper while Artoo waits with fusioncutter at the ready. She thinks that he looks marginally better— a bit of color has leached into his cheeks, at least.

 

Rey marches up to him in brisk, purposeful strides. "How's that coming along? Have you fixed the bend in the lower airfoil yet?"

 

"A week ago. It's the gyro-stabilizer that's now all... wonky," Ben mumbles, without looking at her. "Nearly pitched me headfirst into a ravine yesterday."

 

"You'd have deserved it." But there's no real unkindness in her tone. "I can help you with that processor, though." She squats down beside him, their heads bent over the open circuitry panel, nearly touching.

 

Luke leads Leia inside the house. "That," he says, gesturing towards the younger people once they're out of earshot, "took a lot of work, and patience. I sometimes rip out a few of those wires myself, just to give them something to do aside from fight."

 

"You're a regular martyr," Leia says dryly, and, for a moment, his eyes contain a ghost of their old twinkle.

 

*

 

"Has he told you why he did it?" Leia asks Luke as they sit at the dining table, two cups of Dagoban berry tea steaming in front of them.

 

"Not in words, no," Luke replies. "But he has allowed me to... see a little of what happened. It is helping me understand."

 

They're not talking about the destruction of the Jedi academy— that's an older wound, thornier, far more painful to reach. They're talking about Snoke's death. They're starting from the end, working their way backwards, because even Luke Skywalker needs time to forgive.

 

*

 

"I put too much of myself into starting my academy. I loved Han too much," Luke tells Rey, before the siege on Snoke's fortress. "I cannot fight Kylo Ren when there is anger in my heart."

 

_"I_ can," Rey mutters, twisting the meaning of his words. "I've got a whole turbolaser's worth of anger. I've saved it all up for him."

 

Luke's chuckle is dry and rusty, and Leia thinks that it must have been ages since he last laughed. "Give him a good ding 'round the ears for me," he jokes to Rey.

 

After the girl takes her leave, Leia turns to her brother and brings up the issue weighing on her mind. "Will she be all right?" _If she goes into battle with sound and with fury, won't it tempt her, won't it pull her into the abyss—_

 

"She is— new," muses Luke. "A new thing. Hers is not the path of the Jedi as it was taught to me. I am too set in my ways; I equate anger with the Dark Side, and it is too late to break out of the habit. But, _her—"_ He nods at the spot that Rey has vacated. "She knows how to carry anger. She doesn't let it carry her."

 

"A balancing act," says Leia. "I don't like it. I can order to her to stay with the army, to not engage him directly—"

 

"She will not listen," he says. He looks almost sorrowful, as if he wishes it could be any other way. "The bond runs deeper than you and I know, Leia. All that bad blood, and all that knowing each other inside and out— this, partly, is why it has to be her. No power in the galaxy will stop her from coming to him. Nothing will stop her from finishing this."

 

iv.

 

They are in the kitchen of the house on Morning, are Leia and Ben. The sunlight is diamantine in its brilliance as it slants through the windows, and Leia thinks that there is a reason Luke insisted on this planet. Here, the shadows are clean.

 

She's slicing up some Corellian apples at the counter. Her son is looking at everywhere but at her. Luke and Rey have tactfully made themselves scarce.

 

_It shouldn't be this difficult,_ Leia thinks, _to stand in a room with someone I carried beneath my heart._

 

Oh, but it _is._ She'd once had a meeting with the Howler Tree People of Bendone that required a team of translators, not to mention medicine for the headache their ultrasonic voices induced, administered continuously yet discreetly so as not to offend. She'd rather be back there. She'd rather be anywhere but here.

 

"Will you be staying long?" Ben asks. Stiffly, formally.

 

"Five day cycles or so," Leia replies, before she remembers that no true night falls on this place, only clocks and calendars to mark the passage of time. "And then I must return to the Core to help with—"

 

"Ah, yes, the affairs of state," he interrupts, in such a sour and ugly voice that her grip on the knife tightens.

 

"First of all," she says tersely, "we are not going to blame my political career for what happened to you. For what _you_ did. Yes, I was busy, I was often offworld. But, at first, I took you with me whenever I could. I only stopped because of what happened on Munto Codru. You were a high-profile target and I wanted to keep you within the walls of the Imperial Palace, where you could be guarded at all times. I will not apologize for that. Do you understand?"

 

He is silent, so silent that she almost turns around to check if he's still in the room. But, no, she knows the Force too well, his presence is there, humming coiled like glass about to break.

 

She takes a deep breath, remembers what Rey told her. "But I _will_ apologize," and her voice catches, "for not visiting you at the academy. That was back when we were starting to receive disturbing intelligence about the First Order— but, no, I should have made time to see you. I am sorry for not doing that."

 

She senses his surprise. Perhaps he was not expecting an admission of failure, so readily given. "The voice in my h— Snoke— he told me you left me at home because the kidnapping made you realize that I was more trouble than I was worth."

 

_How could you have believed that?_ she wants to demand, wants to shake him by the shoulders, wants to scream at him with all the rage of her hopeless, injured love. But of course a boy will believe anything, when he is tiny and alone and vulnerable and scared. She stares down at her hands. These hands have signed treaties, have been wooed by the prince of the Hapes Consortium, have killed Jabba the Hutt with his own chains, are now slicing apples in a house of exile. These hands were helpless to prevent the evil that wormed its way into her child's soul.

 

"What else did Snoke tell you?" She's a tactician through and through and she's not about to sacrifice this opening.

 

"Nothing that I didn't already know. Or thought I knew at the time," he corrects ruefully. "That you were all jealous, because I was so strong. That Father didn't like me—"

 

She had been determined to let him keep talking, but this, this is so _jarring,_ so far off-base. She drops the knife and whirls around to face him at last. "Your father—"

 

"Wanted a son who was like him." Ben's voice is all the more cruel for its detachment. "A son who shared his interests, who laughed at his jokes. I was not that son. I preferred reading to getting dragged along on his escapades on the _Falcon._ I was anxious in large crowds. I found him... abrasive. And he, in turn, must have found me disappointing."

 

And she doesn't know how to say it, how, yes, Han Solo had not been a perfect father, but his whole world lit up every time you smiled, I could feel that, couldn't you, Snoke took every small thing and made it ugly, rotted it in your mind. She doesn't know how to tell him that, you are too much like me, my son, I didn't like Han at first, oh, the fights we had, you were his first and only child, he had no idea what he was doing, but, stars, did he try to do right by you, he was not the father you wanted, either, but even so, _you shouldn't have killed him—_

 

A skilled politician knows when it is prudent to retreat. She grabs the plateful of apple slices from the counter. Holds it out to him. A small offering, made perhaps years too late. "Hungry?"

 

*

 

Night here is an artificial thing, generated by panels that close over the windows of the house, blocking out the eternal sun. A man-made darkness, but enough to sleep by.

 

Leia, though, cannot sleep. She tosses and turns for a while, before finally leaving the sanctuary of her bedroom to fix a calming draught. However, she pauses at the sound of soft voices floating up from the parlor. The acoustics of this place are cleverly engineered, whispers turning into audible words above the hum of the power cells. In the days of the Old Republic, this was a safeguard against conspiracy, but now she is merely an accidental eavesdropper.

 

"You have to tell them why you killed Snoke, what was going through your mind when you did it," Rey is urging. "I'm getting tired of pretending I don't know. You have to let Master Luke see it all. They might even lift your banishment—"

 

"I like it here," Ben interrupts. "Besides, you weren't supposed to see that, anyway."

 

"There are a lot of things in your head that I wasn't supposed to see," Rey snaps, with enough _arch_ that it makes Leia raise an eyebrow.

 

There is silence for a while, thick threads of it. And then he changes course. "You dreamed of Jakku. That's why you woke up. You were a child again, in the middle of a sandstorm. You thought that it would swallow you whole."

 

"And _you_ were dreaming of your grandfather," she retaliates. "And he was standing in a desert, too."

 

"I think, perhaps," he says, "that was the closest to an honest dream of him that I've ever had."

 

Rey snorts. "What even is an honest dream?"

 

Another silence. And then, "My dreams of you," he tells her, a hoarse confession.

 

Leia quietly returns to her room.

 

*

 

"Who," a five-year-old Ben asks, pale-faced, on the way back to Coruscant, "is Lord Vader?"

 

Han is still jittery from the events on the kidnappers' worldcraft. "Don't call him that." Too sharp, too rough. He winces the moment the words leave his mouth. "Don't call him that, kid," he repeats, more gently, too late.

 

*

 

The clock tells Leia that it is dawn, or it should be. She enters the parlor to find Ben and Rey still there, fast asleep. Rey is lying on the couch, perched almost at the very edge, curled into herself. Ben is sitting on the floor, leaning back, head tilted up, nape resting against her bent knees.

 

They spring apart the instant Leia sets one foot into the room. Asleep to alert in the space of a breath. Hands flying to where lightsaber holsters should be.

 

Battle instincts. The young shouldn't have to wake up this way.

 

Rey stumbles out of the house. Leia watches Ben watch her leave.

 

*

 

There is a lake at the bottom of the hill, as silvery black as polished obsidian. Yet another peculiarity of this planet, that its waters seem to collect night beneath their placid currents.

 

Rey is standing on the shoreline, at first stiff and unyielding, but, when she turns to Leia, her eyes are those of one who is lost.

 

"I didn't want this!" Her voice is ragged, tearful. "He was the _enemy._ I never asked to understand. In my soul Han Solo falls, again and again. In my mind, the darkness— the red light—" Behind her, the surface of the lake is swirling, propelled by anger and grief and confusion. "Why did I have to be the one, General? _Why did it have to be me?"_

 

Leia opens her arms. Rey collapses into them, shoulders heaving. _When,_ Leia wonders, as she stares blindly out over the black water, _do children learn not to cry, but to weep?_

 

*

 

Princess Leia Organa, of the Royal House of Alderaan, doesn't ask for any of it, either. She is born into a world where darkness has already fallen. She is eighteen years old, and the youngest member of the Imperial Senate to ever be elected, when she is formally presented to Palpatine.

 

(A masked figure dressed in black watches her from his place at the Emperor's side.)

 

She is there when they establish the Alliance to Restore the Republic. She lives a double life, using her diplomatic immunity to run covert Rebel missions.

 

She watches her homeworld _burn._

 

She calls Luke a little short for a Stormtrooper. She says goodbye to Han as he is frozen in carbonite. She kills Jabba the Hutt.

 

(In her dreams, she kills him again and again.)

 

She becomes Chief of State of the New Republic. She names her son after a man she doesn't know but who had once been her only hope. She thinks she is bringing him into a world where he is safe, where that hope has paid off.

 

She loses her brother and her child in a single blow, loses her husband not long after. She becomes General of the Resistance. She learns that the Hosnian System has been wiped out, reads the deaths of friends and former colleagues in a single tense dispatch. She feels the death of the man she loves, gritting deep into the marrow, a hollow shout into the void. She has to live with the knowledge that she sent him straight into their son's red light.

 

(Han wouldn't look at it like that, of course, but— he would have done _anything_ for her. Including that. Finally that. One last command from Her Worshipness.)

 

No, she never asks for any of it. But she is like Rey, or Rey is like her. Some people are born to fight. Some people are born to endure.

 

v.

 

"What are you thinking about?" Luke asks Leia, joining her beside the shore where she had held Rey not fifty hours ago.

 

"Starkiller." Not the weapon. That had been named after someone. "Galen Marek," she clarifies.

 

"I got it the first time," he says, slightly chiding. They have their own kind of Force-bond after all, Leia and her twin. "They must not have known what really happened, or they would have chosen a different name."

 

"No. I know how the First Order works— worked," she corrects. "They probably thought it was poetic justice."

 

Yes, Galen. Darth Vader's former apprentice, who gave up his life so that the founders of the Rebel Alliance could escape. A double agent at first— and then, in his last moments, a martyr. "I was the one who proposed that we adopt his family crest as our symbol, you know," Leia muses. "The Alliance Starbird. It flew on our banners, on our X-wings. To honor him."

 

She glances over her shoulder. Ben is a blurred silhouette against sunlight on top of the hill, watching the bright, clear skies. "Was that why I was so convinced that there was still Light in Ben? Was I remembering Galen, and how he redeemed himself?"

 

Luke is silent, letting her draw her own conclusions. At last, she asks him, "So? Have you figured out why he killed Snoke yet?" Luke and Ben had a rather intense, unspoken conversation on— according to the clocks— the afternoon of yesterday. The walls of the house shook with it.

 

"There is a saying," Luke replies, "among the Cheydinhal warrior-tribes in the Mid-Rim: _Kill a boy's father, and vengeance festers in the son."_

 

Leia shivers. "He was the one who—"

 

"Yes. And then he killed Snoke, leaving Rey with a single target to focus all her strength on."

 

She stills. "Himself."

 

"He wanted to die, Leia." Luke's gaze is on the hilltop as well. Rey has emerged from the house, and is walking towards Ben. Two silhouettes, the distance between them gradually closing in slow, tentative steps. "He saw it as a kind of deliverance. He thought she would deliver him."

 

"Okay," Leia says. It's not enough, but it's enough for now. It's enough to know that Han's death hadn't been for nothing, that it had chipped away at the armor and let the light in, even light so thin and fragile. Of course, all deaths mean something, but she is Leia Organa, she can't help it, she thinks in terms of heroes after a lifetime of walking with them. "Okay."

 

On the hill, Rey reaches out to touch Ben's arm. Her fingers clutch at his sleeve, and stay there. He continues looking at the sky, the two of them unmoving, her arm a bridge between them.

 

*

 

"We need a flag to rally behind," announces a young and fiercely defiant princess of Alderaan, wiping snow off the table to reveal the family crest of a fallen house. "A symbol of hope."

 

("But— _Starkiller—"_ someone will protest, later. And Leia will say, "His name was Galen Marek. He whispered his birth name as he died.")

 

Meanwhile, a golden-haired woman is approached by one of the Rebellion generals as she gazes out at the night sky of Kashyyyk. "You knew that he was working for the Empire, when he first came to you," she says. "Why did you help him?"

 

"Among all his dark thoughts, I glimpsed one bright spot," the general tells her. "One beautiful thing he held onto, even at the end. You."

 

The general's name is Rahm Kota. He will later organize Grey Squadron's mission to infiltrate the first Death Star. The woman's name is Juno Eclipse. She will later become captain of the Rebel flagship, the _Salvation._

 

These are the smaller stories that get lost along the way, as Han, Luke, and Leia recount the war to Ben. There is so much to tell him, and— as it turns out— too little time. She sees it all too clearly now, in hindsight. She should have bridged the difference between what was necessary to construct a narrative and what was _important_ to give it meaning. These are the stories that she should have told her son.

 

*

 

Approximately twelve hours before she and Rey have to fly back to the Core, Leia accidentally intrudes on yet another private moment. This time, she's at the doorway to the parlor, within plain sight, but the two young people don't even notice her. The bond shuts out everything else, guarding the entrance like a two-headed serpent about to strike.

 

Rey is sitting on the couch. Ben is kneeling in front of her, head bowed. The glow-panels have been switched off, the covers over the windows have been drawn. But there is still sun, peeking through the cracks, tangling their figures in a net of chiaroscuro.

 

"I have been here eleven months," he whispers. "Give me night. Give me the stars. I have forgotten. Sunset over Coruscant, or twilight on Jakku, anything. Help me remember."

 

"And you said you liked it here," she grumbles, but her fingers are moving slowly through his hair in soothing strokes, and she pulls him into memories of starlight and the moon, memories so intense that even Leia can feel them. Darkness. Evening breeze. A shadow-soft world. Night sky. And radiance, always radiance, gentle and silver, washing over the soul like forgiveness, and like benediction.

 

*

 

Time, then, for parting, over the bone-white ground. Luke takes Leia's hands in his and promises to continue sending her regular updates on Ben's progress. She nods, wonders if during her time on Morning she's done what she set out to do. She had wanted, vaguely, to find some kind of absolution in this sharp land. But perhaps that is a slow process, like disarmament, like orbit.

 

Ben and Rey are also saying their goodbyes. Leia turns her face to them just in time to catch Ben lean awkwardly down, as if to whisper something in Rey's ear— or as if to—

 

His eyes snap to Leia, as if he feels her gaze on him. He jerks away from the girl, a heated flush rising to his gaunt cheeks.

 

Leia's not really surprised at all, to be honest, but, for the sake of his pride, she should probably pretend to be. She offers him a semblance of a double-take, and then she waits until Rey has skipped onto the _Falcon_ 's ramp before she walks over to him.

 

_My son,_ Leia thinks, blinking up at his pale face, trying to figure out which parts are hers and which are Han's. Trying to see where the hurt began, and how it could have run so deep, and if it will ever completely heal.

 

"Will you return?" Ben inquires, careful but civil.

 

Across the span of years, a ten-year-old boy watches Leia with sullen eyes and asks in a bewildered voice, "Why do I have to go away?"

 

"Yes," she promises now, in the clear light of Morning. "I'll come back soon." She means it; nothing in the galaxy will stop her. "Wait for me."

**Author's Note:**

> The planet of Morning is mine (TM), but I wouldn't want to live there.
> 
> The retconned Organa-Solo kids ([Jacen](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Darth_Caedus), [Jaina](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jaina_Solo_Fel), and [Anakin](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Anakin_Solo)) are kidnapped by [Hethrir](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hethrir) of the [Empire Reborn](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Empire_Reborn) in the Expanded Universe novel _[The Crystal Star](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Crystal_Star)_. This same book marks the first appearance of [the star yacht](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Alderaan_%28yacht%29) that Leia named after her homeworld.
> 
> [The Chiss Ascendancy](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Chiss_Ascendancy).
> 
> [Grass painting](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Grass_painting) is a type of botanical art that is, as far as I know, exclusive to Alderaan.
> 
> [Schematics](http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/5/5e/Skyhopper_egvv.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20081015143845) of a [T-16 skyhopper](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/T-16_skyhopper).
> 
> [Prince Isolder](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Isolder) of [the Hapes Consortium](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hapes_Consortium) falls in love with Leia in the events of the Expanded Universe novel [_The Courtship of Princess Leia_](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Courtship_of_Princess_Leia).
> 
> [Kashyyyk](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kashyyyk/Legends) is the Wookie homeworld, and also the site where the Alliance decides to adopt the crest of the [House of Marek](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/House_of_Marek) as their [symbol](http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/c/cb/Marek_Symbol_of_Hope.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20080824051019), following the events of the video game _[The Force Unleashed](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Unleashed_%28video_game%29)_.
> 
> DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT [GALEN MAREK](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Galen_Marek) and [JUNO ECLIPSE](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Juno_Eclipse). JUST DON'T. IT'S BEEN YEARS AND I'M STILL CRYING.
> 
> The part about the warrior-tribes is actually a reference to [the Dark Brotherhood](http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Brotherhood) in the [_Elder Scrolls_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls) series, and the saying quoted by Luke appears in [_Skyrim_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim) as one character's allusion to the fate that befell the Brotherhood's sanctuary in the city of [Cheydinhal](http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Cheydinhal) during the events of [_Oblivion_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_IV:_Oblivion).
> 
> ["Morning in the Burned House"](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/morning-in-the-burned-house/) is a poem by [Margaret Atwood](http://margaretatwood.ca/).


End file.
